The Internet has evolved from a medium to interconnect machines into a medium to connect machines with content such as videos and photos. While the Internet developed on top of various mechanics, such as routing information via IP address, future architectures may employ alternative mechanisms in view of the current state of the Internet. One common principle among many proposals is that these future architectures may be centered on the content provided, rather than the machines themselves.
Content-centric networking is a more recent paradigm where content is requested by name, rather than location. This paradigm may employ name-based routing, wherein a router may move traffic to a destination server based on the “content name.” As such, Internet routers may be provided with explicit information as to the content being moved.
One result of name-based routing is that, while IP addresses are constrained in the number of variations and are clustered geographically, content names may take on virtually any value and may point to a server located anywhere, regardless of the locations of servers hosting content with similar names. As such, the number of entries in a name-based routing table may be orders of magnitude larger than an IPv4 or IPv6 routing table. This presents new challenges in efficiently storing the table and quickly forwarding traffic using the table.